might have been pleased if he could have united the elegance of Sir Joshua to his own humour, and that the knight might be proud of adding the powers of Hogarth to his own taste, without either of them possessing a particle of the diabolical passion alluded to by Mr. Nichols, who thus winds up the character: "_Justice, however, obliges me to add, that our artist was liberal, hospitable, and the most punctual of paymasters._" This is fair and unequivocal praise,--but justice obliges _me_ to add, seems given _upon compulsion_. _Why_ the biographer feels so much reluctance at being _thus obliged_ to commend the hero of his own history, we are not told,--though the cause of a lady being most _indecently caricatured_, is, in the same book, frankly acknowledged. "_She is still living, and has been loud in abuse of this work, a circumstance to which she owes a niche in it!_"--Nichols' _Anecdotes_, p. 114. Hogarth, with all the indelicacy of which he is accused, would have blushed at the perusal of this overcharged character. Though _nothing fastidious_, I cannot quote so disgusting a combination of abominable images. In page 59 we are presented with a series equally delectable. Mr. Walpole remarks that the Flemish painters, as writers of farce and editors of burlesque nature, are the _Tom Brownes_ of the mob; and in their attempts at humour, when they intend to make us laugh, make us sick; that Hogarth resembles Butler,--amidst all his pleasantry, observes the true end of comedy, REFORMATION, and has always a moral. To prove this truth, is one great object of these volumes. But Mr. Nichols, thinking it necessary to _examine whether the scenes painted by our countryman are wholly free from Flemish indelicacies_, has with laudable industry culled some sixteen or eighteen _delicious_ examples, to convince us that they are not. _I omit the catalogue_; yet let me be permitted to suggest, that without the aid of _a commentary_, these indelicacies are not generally obtrusive. I once knew a very grave and profound critic, who employed several years of his life in collecting all Shakspeare's _double entendres_; these he intended for _publication_, to _prove_ that his plays were not fit for the _public_ eye, but was prevented, by a friend suggesting that it would be thought he had acted like the birds--_pecked at that fruit which he liked best_. Leaving these and all other indecencies to the contemplation of those _who seek for them_, let us return to our narrative.